NYE

My thoughts align, 
As usual
With next-day worries,
The moment insufficient.
Though midnight flurries
Distract the spirit,
The quotient of the year,
Upon us now,
Brings only fear -
Matters yet undisclosed,
The bolt of time
Relentless, unopposed -
Sap to the rational,
Or any given thought
That might becalm,
Quench the pacing,
Right the hulk,
As it ought.

The very recent re-evaluation of data gleaned from the Drake equation (the probabilistic estimate of the number of active, intelligent extra terrestrials in the Milky Way) has spawned some interesting scenarios. With the help of vastly superior technology and observational capacity than that available in 1961, a group of Caltech physicists have estimated that a significant number of intelligent civilisations may have come and gone already. We may, after all, be rather late to the game.

Given the vast age of our universe, there has been plenty of time for life to have evolved elsewhere, gradually developing intelligence and, through science, the capacity to dominate their planet. In our own galaxy, this may have occurred many times, only to hit a roadblock, or filter, at some stage. If the filter is great enough (nuclear war, runaway climate change etc) then the civilisation dies out.

This is highly speculative, of course, as there is no hard evidence. We have never observed any signs of intelligent life on an exoplanet, dead or alive. But if we ever do, then let's hope it hasn't gone into extinction. Dead civilisations are a warning sign that a giant filter is ahead of us and woe betide our chances of getting beyond it.

Today is Christmas Day. It is a slightly odd one for me, since my family cannot meet together. We all know the reason for that and it is being repeated in many homes all around the world. So I feel a whole lot more reflective, and given that I engage with the Christian faith daily in one way or another, this entry is more religious than usual.

If you believe in God then you will sometimes struggle with the question of suffering. It is an age-old one - consider the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes - and comes up often enough in modern discourse. If God is all powerful, loving and genuinely engaged with humanity, then why is there suffering? How come good people come to grief? Why are there pandemics, earthquakes, wars and the like? Why do the wicked (looking at you Trump) prosper?

You can pick these kinds of questions to pieces if you like and I often do. I don't have any trouble reconciling belief in God with the messy world we live in. Theologians talk about Original Sin and The Fall, which I find unconvincing, unless we can see sin as the many imperfections of human nature. Christian commentators also tend to talk about our inability of seeing the wood for the trees. In this analysis, God sees everything from the beginning to the end and knows that ultimately, all will be for the good. This does not diminish the horror of the human condition, but it offers some kind of balm.

I have raised before another option in this debate, that being the question of free will. It goes - if we do have free will - the capacity to freely make our own choices, then the world has be an unmediated, messy place. If God intervenes to help us avoid poor choices, or waves a wand to remove suffering, then can it be said that we are truly free? In this scenario, we become little more than actors in a simulation, the program written to accommodate this forever sunny outlook. But this is a universe of natural laws and we are bound by them. You cannot unjump off a cliff. Or so it goes.

So, wherever you are today, in whatever circumstances you find yourself, have a Happy Christmas. Or at the very least, make the best you can of the day.

Another Christmas is upon us, one that is being lived in the shadow of a great pestilence. In Sydney in particular, another outbreak in the seasonal hotspot of the Northern Beaches, my old stamping ground, casts a different light upon the way people will come together and celebrate.

It's a shame but not the end of the world. In some ways an enforced break with tradition can reinforce the importance of that tradition. There is always next year and the year after.

Australia is very lucky that the numbers of infected are so low when compared with many other countries. We have generally done a good job in containing the contagion and government has been seen to be active and competent, for the most part.

Yet it strikes me as odd that New Year's festivities around the harbour are still going ahead. You could not ask for a more obvious super-spreader that a million people jostling shoulder to shoulder whilst imbibing alcohol. I'm not a stick-in-the-mud but it does not make much sense to cancel the Sydney to Hobart and clamp down on Christmas if you are going to let rip at the end of the year.

Still, what do I know?

The Debt

When the Earth,
A molten orb,
Swung hot in the void,
And there was not
A single living cell
Abroad, 
The oceans seared
And the moon
Jammed up the sky-
Frank nothingness
Not a thought of us,
Or anything that
Crawled or slid or flew-
From the settling dust
A billion years gone by
A freakish first step 
Somehow different
One-off, yes, alive!
Unlocated yet real,
Such eons spent in
Liquid frames
Heedless of the
Death around.
Can it it be thought of,
Fathomed, borne?
This strange life-game,
So utterly found.

I have written, like many others before, at how music can jog something inside, however dormant. My memory, being what is is, always welcomes the input that music brings, no matter how small, how trivial it might seem. It is like the opening of long-shuttered doors, the glimmer of something that was and might yet be again. Not in its original form, of course, but bearing a pleasing resemblance.

So walking though the CBD a few days ago, I chanced on a shop that was not playing Christmas songs (though nothing wrong with that). The song that was playing was "Concovado" by Tom Jobim and I recognised the arrangement almost immediately as being from a very early album from the 1960's. The English title "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars" has been covered almost as extensively as "Garota de Ipanema", most eloquently, (IMHO) by Frank Sinatra on the seminal album he made with Jobim. But as usual, I digress.

That early recording of "Concovado" that I heard in the shop was sufficient to sweep me back to the house of my teens. I was in my own room. My mother came into the adjacent loungeroom and removed the LP from its sleeve. The album The Composer of Desafinado, Plays, was one that I heard often enough, especially when she was unhappy. The power of that memory is striking, reinventing spaces, people, scenes and feelings. If they are not entirely accurate, that's okay. There is a truth at the heart of them that matters.

Anatomies of Changing

Crossing the threshold again,

I spy a distant peg

Begin to hang my things
Sort the space,
Place my bag just so.
Around, the duds of 
Fellow swimmers stowed
In wild array, some so
Neatly put in place,
Zippers tight,
Sock to toe,
Grooved like grid lines,
Or boot-camp beds.
The dishevelled rest -
Towels, t-shirts tossed
As if the owners fled,
Conjuring earthquakes, or
The very last to go.
Still others hang as if
Thrown in jest,
A game of quoits
Or make believe -
Don't fall until we're wet.

Walking the line of pegs,

Through the barred light,
A geography of disrobing
Is as human as it gets.

Back when I used to teach in high school I was given a gold-plated opportunity by one of my Principals. He had looked over my qualifications (unbeknownst to me) and called me into his office one day. 

"You're drama trained," he said.

Indeed I was, but there had been no demand for such teachers. I had a full English load.

"I want you to set up a drama space and run classes, if we can get the students."

I almost fell off my seat. No-one thus far in my career had shown the slightest interest in what I was qualified to do. I had never been asked before.

Within 12 months the school had an impressive drama studio, created out of an old storeroom, a budget, and five classes. My teaching life had been transformed. It was jolly hard work but intensely satisfying. For once, I really felt that I was in my element.

I mention this ancient history only because of a book I received in the post on Thursday last. I had been perusing my library a few weeks earlier and noticed that a volume of a particular series of plays was missing, one that contained a one-act play that I had directed long ago. I had found a second hand copy online and now I have the full set. Just sentimentality, I realise.

But the play itself is a bit of a gem because it falls into the very category of absurdism that I found most challenging. The Smile, by Howard Barker, is a didactic piece ideal for an ensemble of student actors. It lends itself to endless reinterpretation and in fact, the two productions I directed were substantially different on a number of levels.

One day I wouldn't mind reviving it as part of a performance festival. Who knows?

the water boils
and birds cry out in steam
as the blind piper blows

Readers of this blog (surely none-ed.) will know that I have an affection for Chinese history, it being long and broad and full of people and events to recommend it. It is hard not to admire the fact that China has been around for over 2500 years, more if you count the various iterations that occurred before that time.

So it is with sadness that I witness the current dismal state of affairs between Australia and China. Australia is not blameless in its conduct over the years, having a breed of politician who is inclined to be both tin-eared and indiscreet. This country also has a close military relationship with the United States, a pact which has tended to cast us in the light of a kind of Antipodean sheriff. Once again, some leaders in Canberra have been guilty, in both word and deed, of encouraging this absurd fantasy. It does not play well in the wider world.

Still the Chinese leadership has it faults too, being somewhat thin-skinned and inclined to want its own way at all times. Decades of relentless authoritarianism have not created a mindset conducive to compromise or negotiation. Petty bullying over trifles is the order of the day. It is hard to see how this will play out.

If China wants to loosen the ANZUS alliance then it is going about it the wrong way. Moreover, Australia is already in talks with Japan over closer defence ties and I can only see this trend accelerating with other regional states who fear the same treatment. It seems counter-productive for a country that wants to dominate its region.

Killing the chicken to scare the monkey is a Chinese idiom that may or may not be apt in this case. But if Australia turns out to be the chicken, then who might the monkey be?

My local pool has become much busier over the years, particularly with regular morning swimmers. There was a time when I could have driven an army duck through the water without causing the slightest alarm. 

I remember one cool, wet day - the last day of the school year almost 30 years ago - when I dashed from the staffroom and drove back to the Mountains hoping that the pool would be open. It was, though utterly empty save for one huddled attendant, the steam rising languidly from the warm water.

Nowadays, it hard to find a space anywhere, with two or three to a lane and lots of folks doing exercises of one sort or another. There are more eccentrics too, bless them, for whom the rules of etiquette have no place. They bob and wander like ageing mines, heedless of other swimmers, ready to explode on contact.

It makes things interesting, to say the least.